high elves for the early game hunters and late game points. The high elf casting points does sound like a solid contender though i agree. I did consider air but i didn't want to double down on stuff weak to fire. and their blight and shock weakness is covered by the serpents and the horned god.

i was scared of any potential fire units playing as frostling (and horned gods have some weakness to fire) so i went earth for the earth elementals because they just hard counter anything draconian and are also insanely efficient vs dreadnoughts with the 40% phys and 100% fire protection. I was running double earth and creation at the time. i never ran out of gold because i was sacrificing ice queens is what i'm trying to say. i only sacrificed like 5 over the course of 10 turns to turn a volcanic and tropical area to ice so my people weren't so pissed off. and it's not like i was sacrificing dozens of them. and my entire army was mana based so i had mountains of money.

Well with the racial the queens were only costing me ~110 gold.

Age of wonders 3 wiki druid